Tony Blair on the day of announcing the date of his departure:

"The British are special. The world knows it; in our innermost thought, we know it: this is the greatest nation on Earth.

...There is only one goverment since 1945 that can say all of the following: more jobs, fewer unemployed, better health and education results, lower crime and economic growth in every quarter. Only one goverment : this one."

from his bio by BBC:

He was a "different sort of person" now, who was less concerned about being "liked".

Blair had been hardened by a decade in office.

He had become a conviction politician - a very different character to the one that had first walked into Downing Street in 1997, guitar case in hand.

Michael Moore in an interview with Amy Goodman:

It’s about how we structure ourselves as a society, how we treat each other, and this American mentality of every man for himself, how that has to stop -- this kind of “me” society that we live in has to go to the “we” that the rest of the world lives in.
...
It’s these films -- and I’ve been doing this really since Roger & Me” -- are films about -- ultimately about our economic system. We have an economic system, as I’ve said before, it’s unjust, it’s unfair, it’s not democratic. And until, ultimately, that changes, until we construct a different form of economy in a way that we relate to capital, I don’t think that -- I think we’ll continue to have these problems, where the have-nots suffer and the haves make off like bandits.

Eric R Kandel in Apr 2006 Scientific American Mind:

Cori Bargmann,  a geneticist now at Rockefeller University, has studied two variants of the soil nematode Caenorhabditis elegans that differ in their feeding patterns. One is solitary and seeks food alone. The other is social and forages in groups. The only difference between the two is one aminoacid in an otherwise identical receptor protein. Transferring the receptor from a social worm to a solitary one causes the solitary creature to socialize.

    Another example involves male courtship in the fruit fly drosophilia. A key protein, called Fruitless, governs this instinctive behavior, and fruitless is expressed differently in male and female flies. Ebru Demir and Barry J. Dickson, neuroscientists  at the Research Institute of Molecular Pathology in Vienna, have made the remarkable discovery that when female flies express the male form of this protein, they mount and direct courtship, toward the other female flies - or toward males genetically engineered to produce a characteristic female odor, or pheromone. Dickson also found that for Drosophilia to grow the neural circuitry for courtship and sexual preference, the Fruitless gene must be present and active during the fly's early development. (If scientists add this gene later, instead, then it does not have the same effect.)


Frans de Waal via Ian Parker in "Swingers", New Yorker:

Who could have imagined a close relative of ours in which female alliances intimidate males, sexual behavior is as rich as ours, different groups do not fight but mingle, mothers take on a central role, and the greatest intellectual achievement is not tool use but sensitivity to others ?


from the same article:

Gottfried's one of those people who don't want to be criticized, so they make absolutely certain that they've completely nailed everything down before they publish.


NYTimes article on "falling professions" (medicine, law):

And then there is, yes, the money issue. Or rather, money envy. Associates at major New York firms often start at $150,000 to $180,000, said Bill Coleman, the chief compensation officer at Salary.com, a company that tracks income statistics. Partners at the country’s biggest 100 firms took home an average of $1.2 million in 2006, according to American Lawyer.

Hardly small sums, but for many senior investment bankers, bonuses and salaries this year will average $2.25 million to $2.75 million, according to Options Group, an executive search and consulting firm.

Doctors rarely approach such heights. While income varies widely, a typical physician might earn $150,00 to $300,000, according to Salary.com data. A surgeon might make $250,000 to $400,000; hot-shot surgeons can earn $750,000 a year, and superstars over a million dollars.